The crucial point however, is this: the higher the utilisation of the energy-project, the better off is the supply from the public grid, since its fixed transmission costs result in a decreasing unit-cost, if the load-factor increases.

It also seems that the running-cost of a micro-hydro plant cannot easily be covered by simply selling electricity at a too high rate; the solution will rather be an adequate shaping of the tariff, in order to promote use of electricity to obtain a good load-factor.

The passenger load-factor, a measure of how full planes fly, decreased however by 0.9 percentage points to 74.8 percent, a statement said, as capacity increased owing to use of larger planes and a reduction in space alloted to business class.

(load-factor problem), etc. But these influential factors are quantifiable; more difficulties arise when one has to justify a bad IER with intangible benefits like the longrange value of "rural development" or "local self-reliance".